


Hellion

by AlLio



Category: The Scorpio Races
Genre: F/M, Horses, Tsr, the Kendricks - Freeform, the connollys
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-16
Updated: 2020-08-16
Packaged: 2021-03-06 01:21:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,962
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25935103
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlLio/pseuds/AlLio
Summary: "Your mother was a hellion. She did all but ride in the races.""Really?" I ask, hopeful for more information."Probably."The story of how Puck's parents met.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 5





	1. Chapter 1

Really, the whole thing was Henry Connolly's fault. 

If he hadn't been such an avid fisherman, then maybe he wouldn't have been on the water when he dredged that skinny gray capall uisce up in a tangle of seaweed and net. If he hadn't brought Colby along, then maybe he would have just let that creature go. And if he hadn't let Colby keep her, then maybe I wouldn't have gotten ahold of a capall uisce of my own and then I wouldn't have ridden in the races and then everybody would still be alive. 

If it weren't for Henry, there wouldn't be a story to tell. 

It all begins on a dark night, in our little stone house on the far outskirts of Skarmouth. I'm in my bedroom beneath the window, listening to the shhh, shhh, of the sea on the other side of it, and just barely see the most slender of moons hanging in the dark sky. It's beautiful, but not unusual. 

What's unusual is that there's a taptaptap at my window. My heart stops. 

"Cate." A voice just barely above the sound of the sea. "It's me." 

I fling my window open. "Colby Gabriel Connolly! I just about set a knife to you." 

He makes a face at me and climbs in. "You haven't got one in your bedroom." 

I step back to let him, giving him my most ferocious glower. If my father saw us right now, despite my best efforts to convince him that we're merely friends, not courting, he would have a cow. And Thisby does not have the suitable grass for those. "What are you doing here? It's late!"

"What are you doing up? It's late!" He mimics me. "What do you think? I was out fishing with my brother. Care to guess what we caught?" 

I cross my arms. "Hopefully fish, considering his livelihood."

Colby ignores me. He's bursting with an idea, and his ideas are like the storms during Scorpio season- there's no holding them back, only taking cover before you can get caught in the middle. "He caught a capall uisce." 

I'm not sure what this has to do with me, but my jaw drops a little. One of the water horses- dangerous, sinuous, emerging from the sea throughout the month of October before they gallop back into the waters after the first of November, the day of the Scorpio Races. 

But. "It's early for that." 

Colby flaps his hands a little, impatient. "We were out deep." 

That's rare. Colby and his brother, Henry, are as alike as the water horses and the soft island ponies are. The same shape but one is solid and dependable and fishes close to the shore, and the other is an adventure. I sense an adventure on the horizon. My annoyance at his intrusion is quickly forgotten. "So what happened to it?" 

"Well, Henry was all for cutting it loose, though he was upset about the net- and I convinced him to keep it."

"But you have Donn." 

It's too dark to see Colby's expression, but I'm willing to bet that he's rolling his eyes at me. "Thank you Cate, I've come all this way just for you to remind me about that." 

I stick my hands on my hips. If I can't see Colby, then he can't see me, but doing it makes me feel better. "Then what did you come here for?" 

"I don't know. I had a thought-" 

"That'll make the headlines on the mainland-"

"And it sort of-" he makes a frustrated sound with his throat, like one of our chickens does when my father kills them. "I needed to come tell you." 

"Then tell me." 

"Ithinkyoushouldhaveher." 

"What?" 

Colby clears his throat. He's finally simmering, instead of boiling over. "I think," he says, "you should have her. The capall uisce." 

"I-" for once, I'm speechless. Words press against my tongue, but it takes awhile for me to find the right ones. "What would I do with her?" 

"Train her. Ride her. Race her. I don't know, whatever it is hellions do with water horses." 

Hellion. What the women down at the shops called my mother when she galloped her island pony down the beaches, what they called her when she swept my father off his feet and proposed to him. What they called her when she left us for the mainland, for promises of faster horses and bigger cities. 

Hellion. I don't mind being called that. 

"What about-" I start, but then there's a creak at my door. 

It could be the dog, or it could be the house settling. But I don't think it is. Judging from Colby's sudden silence, he doesn't, either. 

There's another creak. 

Colby's breath is hot in my ear. "Meet me at the barn tomorrow," he whispers. "You can meet her then." 

And there's no time to argue, because he's vanishing back through the window and I'm hurling myself into my bed and pretending that I'm asleep before my father opens the door. 

I don't look. I can't. But the scent of alcohol slips into the room as he looks to make sure that I'm still here, that I didn't leave in the night like Mum. 

It lingers in the air, long after he shuts the door behind him.


	2. Chapter Two

"It is harder to get a Keown woman off the back of a horse than it is to get a barnacle from a rock," Mum had always told me. And it was true. She'd been the most beautiful rider, and from the moment she'd set me on the back of my first pony I'd felt at home. As long as I had horses, I was content. 

But not Mum. She was more ambitious than that, and after the island proved to be too small, she left. 

I was eight when it happened. I'd come home from playing with Colby, and Henry when he'd been young and unfettered by adult worries, and she'd been packing, wildly throwing everything she owned into a suitcase. 

"Mum?" 

She spun when she saw me. "Cate. Catherine. I didn't know you were here." 

That should have been my first clue. She always knew what I was doing, always. But I was eight. I didn't know to look for clues. "What are you doing?" 

"I'm leaving the island. Do you want to come?" 

I thought about it for a moment. "What about Colby? What about the ponies?" 

"We can't take them." 

"What about Dad?" 

Mum started crying. "I'm leaving, Catherine. I'm leaving. Are you coming or not?" 

And because I had plans to play with Colby tomorrow and the next day and the next day after, and because I didn't want to leave my pony, I said no. 

Mum left. 

Dad went to the pub. 

"What's on your mind?" Colby greets me at the edge of his barn, in that spot where the sun stops working and it's just darkness beyond. "You seem morose." 

I rally up a smile. "I'm thinking that you're mad, keeping this creature." 

"Aye, but you haven't seen her." He whistles through his teeth and flips on the lights. His dark brown stallion, Donn, whistles back to him. I think the capall uisce looks a little more uneasy than usual, behind the stall bars. 

The Connolly barn isn't designed for the capaill uisce, not really. It's just two stalls and a space for hay, and the stalls are for the regular island ponies. But Colby keeps Donn's stall lined with iron and a sheep with four horns in the other, so it's safe enough. Except now there's another capall in the sheep's stall, so I have to wonder where the sheep went. 

I don't wonder for long, because then the other capall makes her appearance. 

First it's a strangely long muzzle, then fathomless black eyes above. Her ears are shorter than most of the water horses', but they're just as oddly shaped. She's white, but not like the soft flea bitten ponies or the dappled thoroughbreds at Malvern's yard. 

She's white like bone. 

"I may as well throw her back," Colby says cheerfully. "But I thought you may want a chance first." 

"What would I do with her?" I ask. "I can't afford a horse, let alone a capall. I haven't ridden since-"

I stop. 

He squints sympathetically, but doesn't stop his yammering. "You can get a job at that new shop in town, Fathom and Sons. Maybe you can meet a nice son. And then you can ride her-"

I throw out my hands to halt his words. "And risk my neck for what? If I could afford a capall uisce, then I could afford a pony. I've nothing to do with the capaill." 

"You could race her." 

Now he has me stunned, and his words speed up, trying to cram as much into the silence as he can before I remember to speak. "We could disguise you, as a man. We'll pretend you're from the mainland, and then you can race." His eyes grow serious. "You can win. Enough money to get away from your father." 

I press my lips together. It's the first time he's mentioned my father in months, ever since the last time I showed up on the Connolly doorstep with a bruise smudged beneath my collarbone. Usually the topic is the body at a viewing- never looked at, never confronted, but always there in the corner of our conversation. Watched. Anticipated. 

I try to shake off the moment. "It'll never work. Only men race." 

Colby's smile lights the barn, so pleased that his mention of my father has not destroyed the conversation altogether. "I was hoping you'd ask that. Look here." 

He plunges his hands into the ashtray left on the worker's bench and smears them across my cheeks. I flinch away from him, smarting from the scent of cigarette. "What are you-" 

"Look." He spins the mirror that he keeps near Donn's stall. Usually, it keeps the stallion still while Colby tacks up, so impressed with his own reflection Donn is. Donn whistles at the mirror now, but it's not his reflection that looks back at us. 

It's mine, and the ash is trying very hard to convince me that I have the shadow of a beard across my cheeks. It's almost working, if my red hair wasn't loose around my shoulders and my skirts weren't brushing against my bare ankles. 

I won't be convinced. "It'll take more than ash. People here know me." 

"They don't know you on a horse. They won't know you when you tell them your name is.. let's say Kevin." Colby stands behind me and carefully pulls my hair off my neck. Held away from my face, tucked into his fingers, I do look distressingly like a boy. He meets my gaze with a quirked eyebrow, so pleased with himself. "We'll tuck it beneath a cap."

"What about-" I gesture to the rest of my body. 

"What about it?" Colby grabs my hands and swings me around so that I'm looking at him, and not at us in the mirror. "Flat as a board! We'll hide you in plain sight!" 

I wrestle my hands from him, cheeks hot. "I ought to punch you in the mouth for that." 

"Aye, but you won't, because you know I'm right." 

"It's mad." 

"Just mad enough to work, don't you think?" Colby's an ocean, an unstoppable force, and I'm just caught helplessly in the tide. There's nothing to do but go along with him. 

I look in the mirror, and somebody else is staring back at me, somebody who may just be able to enter the Races. I swallow. 

"I'll ride." 

Behind me, the gray mare lets out a soft, keening sigh.


End file.
